Wednesday, November 05, 2014

Imagine having spent $80 bucks on a box of 2014 Topps Supreme and pulling out a Mike Piazza authentic autograph card. You'd be excited. Heck, you might just scream from joy after having seen it come out of the pack.

Then, imagine your pain and anguish when you realize that the card you received is not really Piazza's signature at all. Well.... That's not entirely accurate. It actually is a signature of Mike Piazza, but it's not the Piazza you were looking for. Instead, it's a signature of Angels pitching prospect Mike Piazza.

Oy Vie!

Check out a Piazza Supreme card above and the below prospect Piazza card below. Do you notice any similarities?

Here are this weekends autograph opportunities and events throughout the Southland. As always, be sure to check the Blue Heaven Calendar for other events (a link can always be found on the tab at the top of this
page, just left of center), and always confirm with the establishment.
Everything is subject to change. Please email me with
any tips about upcoming events in Southern California. As the rest of
the week progresses I'll update this post with other events (if there
are any) as I become aware of them. Also, I don't always list every event below, so be sure to check my Calendar. I always try to favor free signing events over paying events. Click on any pic to embiggen.

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Hall of Famer Don Sutton will be at Harry's Dugout this coming Saturday for an autograph session. Go here or here for information.

The wait is now apparently over, and by all accounts Andrew Friedman got his man. Based on numerous reports all over the web, the Dodgers will hire A's Assistant General Manager Farhan Zaidi. An official announcement should be forthcoming.

Zaidi is 37-year old MIT economics graduate with a PhD from Berkeley in a focused field of study on behavioral economics. In between, he worked as a consultant for Boston Consulting Group and the Sporting News.

Clearly, the Dodgers are doing their best to capture the best minds Baseball has to offer. Zaidi is considered smart, personable and not entirely transfixed by sabermetrics. He appears to understand its limitations while knowing that you must be able to evaluate a player by accepting the views of several schools of thought. However, he does comes to us with a pedigree in statistical analysis, so he knows its value. What I especially appreciate about Zaidi is that he recognizes that these players are more than just numbers - that skill is not always easily discernible in statistics.

Overall, I can't say I hate this, but I also can't say I love it either. Although he has had plenty of learned folks sing his praises, it remains to be seen if an all-star cast of ivy-league trained brains can really work together to shift the franchise in the right direction without butting heads. Nevertheless, I am happy to go along for the ride and look forward to experiencing the results. Hopefully, this foray into the 'Moneyball' world is more fruitful than the last time we attempted it with Paul DePodesta.

So far, Kasten and the Guggenheim ownership have been true to their word. They've said that this new phase of the Dodger kingdom would focus on the farm system and bringing along the prospects to the big club, and these recent new hires is proof that they meant it. We are entering a brave new world.

If one is a Dodger fan, what Stan Kasten and Dodger ownership is allowing Friedman to build for a long-term organizational infrastructure is advanced 21st Century Branch Rickeyism, especially if you know how well Friedman treats those with whom he works, and how brilliant a core executive he happens to be. This is not about making the Dodgers a baseball Rodeo Drive and buying up the glitziest free agents their television audience can watch, this is about sustained creative and hardcore baseball excellence.

Although he came through the Oakland "Moneyball" system, Zaidi has a
reputation for blending old-school scouting methods with advanced
analytics to distill the best of both worlds.

His primary responsibilities with the A's included providing
statistical analysis for evaluating and targeting players in the amateur
Draft, free-agent and trade markets. He also assisted on arbitration
cases and Minor League contracts and worked closely with the coaching
staff during the season in analyzing data from advance scouting reports.

"He's engaging, he's able to look at baseball from every angle, consider every element, and he has great leadership skills," A's director of player personnel Billy Owens told Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle in August. "He should be an emerging GM candidate for sure."

The Dodgers just hired a Canadian Muslim Berkeley Ph.D. who grew up in the Philippines, went to MIT, and strongly advocated that the A’s sign Cuban Yoenis Cespedes. What a world. I am giddy. BRING ME ALL OF THE GENIUSES. (I sure hope Bill Plaschke hates this.)

Zaidi comes from an analytical background — he became interested in the
A's, literally, by reading "Moneyball" while in college — but also has
been described as a big believer in scouting. He doesn't just crunch
numbers, but also people. It's not necessary for players and the
front-office to get along like players and coaches must, but Zaidi's
people skills have to be considered an asset and bonus.

According to a profile in the San Francisco Chronicle, Zaidi grew up
in the Phillipines, attended MIT as an undergraduate and, after getting
his doctorate at UC Berkeley, decided to try to break into baseball
after reading the Michael Lewis bestseller, "Moneyball."

He eventually landed with the A's under GM Billy Beane -- the
protagonist of that book as well as the movie based on it -- and worked
his way up to become the team's assistant general manager for baseball
operations.

And here is a video from the SSAC13 conference where Farhan is a part of a panel discussing Baseball analytics. This is a must watch. He speaks a bit about roster construction, understanding the underlying skills that lead to positive outcomes and how BritPop got him the A's job. (Hat Tip: Eric Stephen at True Blue LA).

In celebration of Zaidi's arrival to the Dodgers I made the above fantasy card
for him. I used a photograph grabbed from a photo tweeted by @120Sports ( I've tracked the photo down to an SF Gate article from Feb 2014 - taken by Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle) and the 1959 Topps Baseball card
design.

RIP, Mary Froning O'Meara. She was an outfielder for the Battle Creek Belles and South Bend Blue Sox of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She was 80 years old. This was initially announced on reddit r/Baseball by her grandchild r/SOTGidon. Her wikipedia page can be found here.

Dodgers will name Oakland's Farhan Zaidi the new general manager later this week, according to baseball source.
— Ken Gurnick (@kengurnick) November 5, 2014

BTW, former Padres GM Josh Byrnes is expected to also join the Dodgers front office, via Mark Saxon at ESPN.

As expected, the BBWAA announced that Clayton Kershaw is a finalist for the National League MVP and CY Young awards yesterday. Per Jon Weisman at Dodger Insider:

Kershaw is competing with fellow finalists Adam Wainwright and Johnny
Cueto for the Cy Young Award, which would be Kershaw’s third in four
years if he wins. That award wll be revealed at 3 p.m. November 12 on
MLB Network.

In his bid for his first MVP trophy, to be announced at 3 p.m.
November 13 on MLB Network, Kershaw is up against Andrew McCutchen and
Giancarlo Stanton.

"It feels good," Crawford said. "You're inducted in the Hall of Fame in a
league where a lot of other good players played. To be picked as one of
the inductees is really, really special."

Via Wayne Stewart at Call to the Pen, "Profiling Adrian Gonzalez."

Gonzalez recalled, “All our conversations were usually baseball when we
were young. It was all about baseball—that was our whole life.” Once
the sons and father all played on the same amateur team in a league in
Mexico. Adrian was 15 and his father, a first baseman, was in his 40s.

These historical/biographic pieces being put out by Dodger Insider are fantastic. This time Cary Osborne writes, "Seasons: Mike Marshall’s 1974 — the ultimate workhorse."

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“There’s nothing like wearing a Dodger jersey. There’s nothing like it in sports. I don’t care that I’ve never been anywhere else. I don’t care. There’s nothing like wearing a Dodger jersey.” -- A.J. Ellis